Customer Reviews: Read 15 more reviews...
  Quality Compass Watch November 25, 2008
I needed a watch with a compass, alarm, time and date. This was the only watch that had all three and I bought it.
Mine was purchased from a non-amazon seller, and came with a rubber band, and had a blue dial, not brown like the one shown in photo. I owned velcro bands before, and prefer rubber one. I recommend calling and asking for that variation, as I only found one retailer that sells it in that configuration.
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Compass exceeded my expectations. First of all, it is instantaneous, unlike lensatic compasses. Like lensatics, if it is not held flat it will give a wrong reading, so its important to keep it relatively flat. There is errata of about 5 degrees so you may not want to shoot a mile long azimuth with it. I check it with my regular compass, and its very close. All that's needed for hiking and orientation.
Timex watches have an intuitive setup that they use across the board on their models. I owned Timex Ironman in the past, so the setup looked very familiar.
It has a timer, which counts down from a set time. It is minimally complex, and quite useful.
Alarm, rather quiet. Good if you are already awake and need a reminder.
Chronograph - starts timer and stops when you finishes. straight forward two button operation.
Time date day - large easy to see.
Compass - one button operation, instant reading.
Ultimate backlight - just like other Timex watches - very bright and lights entire dial.
Possible improvements for the future: I'd like to have GPS coordinate capability and a selectable sound for alarm(currently it is not very loud).
It is an excellent watch, at 30-50 dollars, a good deal, well worth the five stars.
 Works good September 16, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Had it for a few weeks now, seems to work good. It did freak out for a second a few days after I got it by completely reseting itself... screen went blank for a sec, then came back. Everything works fine though. If you never calibrated a digital compass, then I can see how it could be frustrating. Also, of course the compass needs to be recalibrated every so often. If I really needed to rely on this compass to get me somewhere, I'd recalibrate it every couple of hours. But just for the gee-whiz factor of having a compass watch I do it once a week or so... or whenever I want a somewhat accurate heading.
Setting digital Compass:
Go outside away from anything metal. Start the little calibrate option holding the compass level to the ground. Spin in 2 circles SLOWLY! Finish the calibrate.
This watch will allow you to enter the difference between true and magnetic north if you want. I really don't see why you would unless you live in a part of the world with a large difference... Timex says this compass is accurate within 5 degrees, so it is really only good for a general idea of cardinal direction. N, NE, E, SE... ect. If you really care about if you're pointing 105 or 110 degrees, then get a regular analog compass.
Very good, but my first one was defective. May 8, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Works very well. Nice that you can adjust compass reading to account for magnetic variation. Features seem to all work. Looks nice. Strap feels/looks good and is replaceable, too. Instructions reasonably easy to follow (except for compass directions which reference control buttons by names not clearly (if at all) shown on the diagrams). All in all a very satisfactory performer. BUT NOTE: my first watch was defective, failing several times over first 2 weeks; I returned to seller for replacement which I have received and put through a rigorous workout for past several weeks. I suggest you do the same, repeatedly testing all the functions to ensure it does not fail. The failure was seen by a sudden resetting of everything back to zero hour. That is Jan. 1, some years ago at 12:00am. Not good.
Good value for the money August 7, 2007
Directional readings are accurate enough to navigate by, but not as accurate as watches costing four times as much.
It has lots of useful features like, alarm, countdown timer, and chronograph.
Decent, but not great June 4, 2007
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I like this watch, the strap and body look nice, and it performs well too. The indiglo display is bright and easy to toggle with the large button at the base of the face, but it doesn't stay on after releasing the button: you must hold the button down to continuously light the background. Not great, but I would've liked a one second delay.
The compass feature is why I bought this particular model, but after using it a few times, I didn't really continue to use this feature. As the manual states, sometimes the compass needs to be reset, and it seems like whenever I took the subway (I live in Tokyo, Japan), or was in a large building, the compass would get screwy.
Despite these caveats, I think its definately more than decent, just not incredible. Thanks Amazon!
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